Why is the behaviour of Excel (particularly with selections, copy & paste) so different from the rest of the office suite?

Answer 1

Because there's a lot more functionality within excel. Usually there aren't formulas in other Office products, so when you C&P in Excel it defaults to copying formulas, which I see confusing people often times.

More often then not, they expect to copy the values, not the formulas. Instead of doing the classic CTRL + V to paste, right click and see the different options (Formulas, Values, Formatting, etc.) and as you hover take not of which letter is for each. Then next time, if you hold down the right click button on the mouse and the respective letter then it will paste with that style, such as values (transpose doesn't do this hover, rather it brings up that right click menu)